But I was faster.
I took a quick step towards him, punched the cross-guard of Fidelity into his face, crunching teeth and knocking him to the floor, then I stabbed down hard, plunging my blade through his heaving belly. And I was inside the door, in the tower, climbing and glaring upwards, the blood rushing hot in my veins. A stone, spiral staircase turning to the right, a dim form above me. I stepped back just in time as a spear clattered on the stone steps in front of me. Then I started to climb again. My sword arm, my right arm, was impeded by the central core of the spiral stairway, but this was not so for the knight above me; he smashed a blow down on me, aiming for my head, and I caught it on my shield, feeling the manic force of the strike right down through my spine. I was knocked back two steps, and looked upwards to see the mad, gleaming black eyes of Sir Eustace de la Falaise staring down at me through the gloom. He had a sword in his right hand, an axe in his left, and he smiled happily as he took a step down towards me, and unleashed a ravaging storm of blows from both hands.
Sword and axe, sword and axe, right and left — the strikes battered my helmet and shield and my hunched mailed shoulders with a terrible ferocity. I could barely use my sword either to defend or attack; the design of the stairwell, with the rising steps rotating sunwise, making it impossible for me to swing my blade. I took as much of the punishment as I could on my shield, but that article was soon battered into a shapeless mass of splintering wood and flapping leather. I fended off Sir Eustace with jabs of my sword point, giving ground, step by step, being forced back down, down and around to the ground floor. Sir Eustace shouted: ‘Die, die, you peasant scum,’ and hammered down his left hand, his axe hand. I felt the blade crunch into the muscle of my shoulder, splitting the iron mail links and just penetrating the flesh. I staggered back another step, but managed to catch my enemy’s next sword strike on the remains of my shield.
Somebody was under my stumbling feet, and I glanced down swiftly to see Thomas coming up and forward under my shield arm, his knees on the steps; from the level of my thighs, he poked the crossbow upwards, aimed, loosed, and the quarrel shot forward and punched deep into the side of the ranting, spitting knight above me, just as he was raising his sword to strike again. He gave a shout of outrage and looked down at the quarrel sticking from his waist. Another crossbow twanged from below me, from the jostling mass of Westbury men who had followed me into the tower. The bolt clattered harmlessly off the round wall behind Sir Eustace’s snarling, bestial face, but it caused the knight to scream in frustrated rage and to hurl his axe at my head, end over end, with shocking force. I ducked in the nick of time, the axe blade crashing on to the round top of my helm and bouncing away. And he ran. Sir Eustace bounded up the stone stairs away from me like a mountain goat; disappearing instantly from view, his slapping steps diminishing and finally ending with the clear sound, high above, of a slammed wooden door.
Even so, we climbed the stairs cautiously. Myself in the lead, with a fresh red Westbury shield furnished by Thomas on my left arm, and my squire advancing behind my left shoulder, his crossbow spanned and ready once again.
At the top of the stairs we paused in front of the door. I looked at Thomas. ‘If it is possible, I want to kill him myself, do you understand?’ I said, nodding down at the deadly loaded crossbow in his steady hands.
‘For Hanno?’ asked Thomas.
‘Yes, for Hanno — and all the others.’
The door yielded to one hard stamp of my right foot, and I was in a large round dim chamber; the only light coming from arrow slits in the stone walls. And there was the Master, on the far side of the room, his hands calmly folded inside the opposite sleeves of his robe, in the position in which I had first seen him. Hiding his thumbs.
A flicker of movement to my left — but hardly unexpected. I relaxed my knees and bobbed down and a sword blade flashed over my lowered head and struck sparks against the stone wall behind me, but I was already moving away, circling the room. I saw that Sir Eustace de la Falaise had the sword in his right hand; he had drawn the lance-dagger, the strange weapon that had ended Hanno and so many other good men, and was holding it in his left.
The crossbow quarrel was deeply embedded above his right hip, and his white surcoat on that side bore a large and growing red stain. I smiled at him: and I swear at that moment I felt no fear at all. God had placed him in my path so that I might have my vengeance. He smiled back at me with his amiable idiot’s grin, and mad little black eyes, swung the sword again, hard, and I took the blow full on my new red shield. Almost at the same time, less than a heartbeat later, he lunged forward with the lance-dagger, lightning fast, aiming for the centre of my chest. But I had anticipated the move and twisted my torso side-on in time to allow the strange blade to strike nothing more precious than air. Then I struck: a full, sweeping downward blow with my sword that would have split his skull if it had landed. But the man had been a Templar, a true Templar with all the martial skill of that famous Order, and wounded or not, he was still formidable. His sword whipped up and deflected my strike harmlessly away and to his left, and we both stepped back at the same time and began warily to circle each other again.
The room was filling with my men, but Thomas kept them against the walls, leaving Sir Eustace and I room to fight our duel. The Master had not moved from his stance by the arrow-slit window on the far side of the round chamber. One glance at his serene, handsome face, his blue eyes watching us, seemingly filled with compassion for all mankind, and I felt a wave of nauseous disgust. He looked like a bishop, a grave man of God, someone who should be revered. I knew better: he was filth, murdering filth, hiding behind a godly robe and a pious manner.
I wanted to hear him scream for mercy.
Sir Eustace attacked again, using exactly the same manoeuvre: a swing of the sword and a snake-quick thrust with the lance-dagger. And once again I blocked the sword with my shield, and dodged the dagger thrust. Then I came at him — hard, fast and with all the bottled anger in my grieving soul. I swept Fidelity laterally at his neck, from the left and then the right, punched at the quarrel shaft protruding from his waist with my shield, driving it deeper into him, causing him to shout in pain and leap away — and then I took two quick steps in and smashed Fidelity hard and down into the outside of his mailed left knee. My blade did not penetrate but he howled, dropped to a kneeling position on the floor, I smashed the outer rim of my shield down on to his right wrist, and his sword clattered away. Immediately, he came surging up at me in a stumbling lunge, trying to grapple my shoulder with his empty right hand and plunge the lance-dagger into my belly with his left. I dodged to my right, out of his path, swung Fidelity and sliced down with all my might as he passed me, hacking through the mail and deep into his shoulder. He shouted once more, a short hard cry of shocked rage. His arm hung limp, useless, a deep purple gash of flesh exposed for an instant, a flash of round white bone. And then the blood fountained up; the lance-dagger dropped from his unfeeling fingers and skittered across the stone floor to land against my mailed foot. He turned to face me, and stood silent, massive-eyed, swaying, weaponless, his whole body drenched with his own spurting gore. I tucked Fidelity under my shield arm, bent down quickly and scooped up the lance-dagger in my right hand, hefted it, looked deeply into his black eyes, then stepped in and punched the blade into his chest, aiming for a spot an inch or so to the left of his sternum. He died there on his feet, staring back at me in disbelief for a single moment, before crashing to the floor.
I turned to the Master and saw that he was now on his knees. I grasped Fidelity once more. The man’s eyes were tightly shut, his head bowed in prayer, his hands still tucked together in the sleeves of his gown.